Songbird premotor nucleus hvc auditory responses are robust, dynamic, and reflect learned predictive values in awake zebra finches
Citation & Export
Hide
Simple citation
Soyman, Efe.
Songbird premotor nucleus hvc auditory responses are robust, dynamic, and reflect learned predictive values in awake zebra finches. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T35H7J03
Export
Description
TitleSongbird premotor nucleus hvc auditory responses are robust, dynamic, and reflect learned predictive values in awake zebra finches
Date Created2015
Other Date2015-01 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (vi, 51 p. : ill.)
DescriptionPremotor and motor areas of the human brain are known to take part in various perceptual phenomena, the most significant of which is speech perception. The present study tests the involvement of a premotor vocal structure in perception of various acoustic signals, using the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), a songbird species that provides the best-studied model organism for vocal learning. Water-deprived zebra finches were trained in a differential classical conditioning task in which CS+ stimuli predicted a water reward while CS- stimuli did not result in any outcome. When stimulus discrimination reached criterion, a set of novel auditory stimuli was passively presented in the absence of water-deprivation outside of the training apparatus ~20 hours before the neural recordings. In awake, restrained birds, electrophysiological activity in response to bird’s own song (BOS), CS+, CS-, passively familiar (PasFam), and novel stimuli was recorded from multiple sites in the vocal premotor nucleus HVC and the HVC Shelf region bilaterally. Multi-unit responses in HVC were found to be highest for BOS, followed by CS+ and Novel, which were higher than CS- stimuli. Furthermore, responses decreased in magnitude with stimulus repetition (adapted) for all stimuli except BOS. BOS-bias over Novel stimuli was found to be higher in right than in left HVC. In HVC Shelf, there was no BOS-biased activity and responses to all stimuli decreased with repeated presentation. Responsive single neurons in HVC showed the same pattern as multi-unit activity among stimulus categories, but, as a population, their responses did not adapt to stimulus repetition. Overall, the results suggest that the premotor nucleus HVC has robust and dynamic auditory responses that also reflect learned predictive values in awake zebra finches. These neural mechanisms may potentially reveal general principles that can be applied to understand the role of human speech production brain regions in recognition and discrimination of speech sounds.
NoteM.S.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Efe Soyman
Genretheses, ETD graduate
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.